


Pre-Dominant

by momebie (katilara)



Category: The Metamorphoses Trilogy - Sarah McCarry
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4225455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are firsts and there are loves, and some loves feel like they will stretch from first to last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pre-Dominant

**Author's Note:**

> This book is gorgeous and I'm honestly just hoping that if I start writing fic about it a fandom will appear. *fingers crossed*

“This isn’t going to work,” I hiss. 

Aurora clenches her teeth. “It will if you shut up and don’t tell the whole world.”

We’re the smallest two people in the line by at least half a head. It must be so obvious that we’re too young to be here. Not eighteen, not old enough to smoke with everyone loitering around us, not even old enough to drive. Everyone around us is coolly posing like they belong and it makes me feel even more fake.

Aurora has done her best with me to make sure we blend in. Me in these black boots that are already causing my feet to ache and her tight grey jeans that barely buttoned around my waist and the Black Flag shirt that used to be her father’s that we’ve cut the sleeves off of so it fits like a tank top, soft and loose and showing more of my skin than I ever would have thought to on my own. Me with the kohl around my eyes and my dark hair fluffed like I’ve been running in the heat for an hour already. Ready for action, looking like I’ve already seen the action. 

Aurora is blending in the only way she knows how, which is not at all. She’s wearing knee high boots of her own, but the brown skin of her legs is bare up to her mid-thigh where they finally meet the tight burgundy skirt with the little intermittent ruffles that I hate. It looks like a broken flower, wilting and sad and not at all Aurora. Her white and gold striped button up is hanging off her shoulder and that’s what I think gets us in. Skin in just the right places. The bouncer barely looks at me as we pass, eyes still devouring as much of her as they can until we’ve disappeared in the swirling, warm press of bodies. 

The band is supposed to be amazing. Aurora’s heard about them from a friend of her father’s, one of the few who still writes every six months or so. It’s the first time either of us have ever been to a concert alone. Aurora walks with her head up and her shoulders back. I skulk along behind, fingers tightly gripping her elbows, knowing that if I lose her in this crowd I will never find her. I can’t bear to lose her. Not for the night, not for a minute. 

“I’m going to get a drink,” she says over her shoulder. I know better than to argue. 

The crowd parts for us as we approach the bar and she slides into the sliver of space between two rough looking guys in jeans and ripped flannels. They look down at her and back up at each other. The blond one to our right puts his hand on her shoulder and says, “Hey, baby.” 

I slide my hand up so that it brushes his off and bare my teeth when he looks at me. 

“No one asked you, bitch,” he says, before shrugging at his friend and walking away. I squeeze in next to her. 

Aurora ignores all of this. She flips her hair and smiles prettily at the bartender and he slides two beers across the scratched wooden top to us. She drops a ten dollar bill on the counter and presses one of the cold, wet cans into my hand. “To tonight.” 

“To adventures,” I agree. We click the cans together and take our first sips. 

My first beer is bitter. The back of my throat tries to close up at the taste of it, but I swallow it down and hold back my grimace. It’s nothing I’d choose to drink on my own. It scrapes over my tongue and dries out my insides, covering over the worry that’s been gnawing at my gut. It tastes terrible. It tastes like freedom. 

I beam at her and gulp down some more. She rewards me with the smile I know is mine alone. Less sharp than the one she uses on boys. Less sarcastic than the one she uses on her mother. Honest, hopeful, reckless, everything we are. I love her so much my heart hurts. After I tilt the can back to sip at the last drops the beer starts to ease that away as well. 

As we finish the lights go out. I’m not holding on to her when it happens and for a moment I feel the whole world close in on me. I’m alone in the dark being buffeted by bodies that I don’t know and my chest tightens. If I could move I would run. But then thin fingers find my wrist, the tips of her manicured nails digging lightly into my flesh, and the world rights itself. She pushes away from the bar and into the crowd, pulling me hard as I bounce off of people in her wake. 

By the time the drums start up we’re pressed against the stage. I’m so close to the singer that when he trips forward with his guitar I have to back up so it doesn’t smack me in the face. The bass line comes in behind the drums and the guitar trips after it and by the time the band are into their first song in earnest the crowd around me has become a singularly minded beast, jumping and pushing and grabbing at each other. I’m terrified we’ll be trampled. I’m elated by the pulse of it all. 

Aurora smiles wide at the singer and then at me before she elbows me in the ribs and sends me careening into the guy behind me. The writhing mass opens up and swallows me whole. It closes behind me again and she’s gone. 

She’s gone, but I’m not alone this time and I’m not in the dark. I don’t have time to worry about being lost. Something about the frenzy is contagious. I don’t know if it’s mob mentality or my body being pulled along by the sound of the kick drum on the off beat or both, but I join in. I dance and kick and wheel and spin and shove every single person who shoves me. Suddenly I know what my body was made for. It was this. 

Aurora finds me during the third song. I can no longer feel my feet in the dreadful boots, but it doesn’t matter because I can feel every atom of the rest of me and the way it’s being seduced by the rasp in the singer’s voice as he entreats me to come as I am, as I was, as he wants me to be. Yes, yes, I will be whatever he wants me to be. She throws her arm around my neck and pulls me close, puts her lips right next to my ear before she shouts, “I told you this would be worth it!” 

Then she tilts her head back and lets out a great, high pitched howl and I join her. Everyone around us laughs and hoots as well and we press into each other in greedy rapture until the final note rings through the tiny room and the wonder-lust leaves us just as quickly as it had come on. 

Inside the club time hadn’t existed. There had been nothing but contact and sweat. Outside on the damp, glittering sidewalk it’s 11:45 at night and there’s a drizzle catching in our hair and on our cheeks and shoulders as we make our way to an all-night pizza place. We don’t bother to run for cover because we’re already soaked. The cigarette smoke clinging to us mingles with the scent of the rain and smells both clean and sour. We bump shoulders and she reaches for my hand. 

“Can you believe that?” she says. Her voice is trembling with the adrenaline. I am also trembling. “I didn’t know anything could feel so _right_.”

“I feel properly tuned.” I squeeze her hand. 

She squeezes mine back. “Yeah, that’s it. Good one. We were meant for that shit.” 

“You were meant for it,” I say. “You were born into it. It’s running through you. Maybe the music can tell that you’re related.” 

Aurora laughs like a bottle cracking on a tile floor. “Don’t be stupid. You’re related too. Sisters, remember?” 

She brings her free hand up, the jagged red line from our blood pact still visible across her palm, and shoves it into my face. I push her away and she pushes me back. It turns into a gentle scuffle. I trip and fall backwards, landing hard against the brick wall. It knocks the air out of me and I slide down it, sitting my ass right into a puddle and not caring. She stands over me for a minute before shrugging and dropping down next to me, unusually graceless. 

“I feel like anything is possible.” I push the hair out of my eyes and rub at them. When I pull my hand away there are black smudges on my skin, a sign I’ve ruined her hard work. “Fuck, sorry.” 

“It looks better that way,” she says, and brushes the hair away from my cheeks with her thumb. Her eyes are bright under the streetlamp. “And I do too.” 

“Can we do this every night?”

“Yes,” she says. “We can do it every hour. Come downs are a bitch.” 

We both know this. We’ve seen her mother crash and burn more times than we can count. She grabs my hand again and I tangle my fingers into hers and hold them all in my lap. 

“I could just,” she starts. She cuts herself off and shakes her head. “That god damned frenzy high.”

“What?” 

Aurora looks at me and I look back. For our entire lives she has been the lightning and I have been the thunder, which is why it doesn’t surprise me at all when she strikes first. 

Her lips are warm against mine and it feels like the air around us has dropped ten degrees. I shiver and pull our hands to my chest. I’ve seen Aurora kiss boys before and every time it looks like consummation. Like they are vying for dominance. It’s a rigged game when Aurora kisses boys, because there’s no chance in hell they’re going to win. But this is different. This isn’t taking, this is giving, so I do what I’ve always done and give back. There’s no tongue and no pushing, just the soft slide of her lips against mine and her beer tainted breath ghosting across my skin. Across the street a man whistles and I flip him off without thinking. 

Aurora pulls away and lays her head against my shoulder. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’ll never have to find out,” I promise. 

“Don’t say that.” It’s a whisper this time, delicate. “You can’t say that.” 

“I can say that I’d walk barefoot to hell and back to find your sorry ass if I had to.” 

“Yes, you can say that.” She presses a kiss to my cheek and then pushes herself up, tugging at my hand and pulling me with her. “Come on, I’m fucking starving.” 

I hold on to her tight as we follow the lights and the smell of baking crust to the brightly lit store front. I hold on to her because I need to. I hold on to her because she needs me to. I hold on to her because the thought of my arms being empty scares me more than I can say. Hopefully I won’t ever know what that sort of hunger feels like.


End file.
